


as the walls come tumbling down

by pdameron



Series: Tumblr Drabbles [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Just Another 'Oh Let Me Write Something for That Scene' Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 09:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17826248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pdameron/pseuds/pdameron
Summary: He remembers an afternoon out on the cliffs in the sunshine, when he’d first landed a clumsy, glancing blow to Flint’s arm. The captain had positively beamed at him, laughing brightly and clapping a hand to his shoulder.I could stand here forever, he’d thought then, watching the way Flint’s eyes had lit up, counting the freckles across his nose.What a fool he’d been.





	as the walls come tumbling down

**Author's Note:**

> i've been getting a lot of asks for me to post my tumblr fics here, so i'll be slowly doing that over the next few weeks....i promise not to clog up the tag lmao
> 
> the prompt for this was a "war's end" kiss

“I will stand here with you for an hour, a day, a  _year_ , while you find a way to accept this outcome, so that we might leave here together. For if not, then I must end this another way,” Silver tells Flint, his hand trembling as it holds the pistol. 

He remembers an afternoon out on the cliffs in the sunshine, when he’d first landed a clumsy, glancing blow to Flint’s shoulder. The captain had positively  _beamed_  at him, laughing brightly and clapping a hand to his shoulder companionably.

 _I could stand here forever_ , he’d thought then, watching the way Flint’s eyes had lit up, counting the freckles across his nose.

What a fool he’d been.

He can feel the tears stinging at his eyes, hears the way they make his voice thicken and quiver, but he will not let them fall. 

If he lets them fall, he’s not sure they’ll ever stop. 

It’s been so easy, lately, for Flint to tell when Silver is lying. He wonders if Flint knows he’s lying now, knows that even John Silver could not come up with a fiction in which he could ever kill him. 

“Do it, then,” Flint says, a horrible resignation in his eyes as he looks at Silver.

Silver’s hand is shaking worse than before, but he will not tear his gaze away from Flint’s. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had never met James fucking Flint, that he’d never known what it is to love someone like this.

“Thomas Hamilton is alive. Just - just let me take you to him. Please.”

Flint stumbles backwards as if he truly has been shot, leaning against the boulder heavily. The betrayal writ into every line of his features is clear as day, as though in mentioning Thomas Silver has crossed some invisible, irredeemable line.

“How  _dare_  you use him against me like this. How  _dare_  you. Why would -  _how_ could you tell such a hideous lie, when you know what his loss has made of me?” 

It’s not the familiar, burning rage that Silver has come to expect from Flint; instead, it is a simmering, anguished anger, quiet but no less powerful. 

“I wouldn’t. Not about this. He’s alive, Flint, I swear it.”

“Oh, you  _swear_  it, do you?” Flint sneers. “Well, if the fucking  _thief_  swears it, then it must be true.”

Silver flinches. Flint is in pain, he knows this, just as he knows the words were carefully chosen to make  _him_  hurt, but - fuck. To hear Flint call him a thief, as if that’s all Silver ever was to him, it cuts him more than he could have expected. 

It’s easy to forget that Flint is just as good at manipulating others as Silver is himself, and he’s that been doing it longer.

“You’ve been lying since the day we met,” Flint says, angry tears in his own eyes now. “Why should anything be different now?”

For Flint to think that he isn’t  _different_ , that everything about the two of them isn’t  _different_ , it’s - it’s ludicrous. Flint knows more of him than anyone, even Madi; there’s no one in the world more  _different_  to Silver than him. The realization that Flint thinks Silver’s lies, his inability to make himself known, somehow imply any indifference on his part, makes Silver want to scream, want to fall to his knees. 

Instead, he tosses the pistol (he’d never bothered to take off the safety) and throws himself at Flint, fisting a hand in his shirt and pushing at him harshly. “Stop this. Stop trying to hurt me, stop fighting. Let me  _save_  you.”

Flint’s eyes are wide and shocked, taken aback by how close they are, by Silver’s frustration. Silver doesn’t know if they’ve ever been so close, if they’ve ever let their breath mingle so intimately. He’s not sure why Flint looks so surprised, though: surely he must have realized that this has always been as much about protecting  _him_  as it is about Madi?

“Save me?”

“Yes, goddamn you.” Silver drops his crutch, reaching up to clutch Flint’s shirt in both hands, desperate. “I can save you this time, I can save you both. I’m  _Long John Silver_  now, not some frail seven year old too frightened to even - ”

He cuts himself off, closing his eyes and taking in a deep, shuddering breath, trying not to get lost in the memories. Soon enough, Flint will join those ghosts, become a thing of the past, and then he’ll let himself remember.

“Silver…” Flint’s voice is softer now, more hesitant, but Silver cannot bear to look at him, instead staring at where his dirt-stained fingers are buried in the shirt. He speaks to his quaking hands, face turned downward and away from his captain.

“You’ll go to Savannah and be with him,  _live_  with him, and you’ll hate me for taking this from you. I will live with your hatred, and you will live with your Thomas. You will be free of this war, free of your rage, free of Nassau and mutinies and  _me_  and - ”

“Silver - ” Flint tries again, but Silver, now that the floodgates have opened, can’t seem to stop himself.

“ - and maybe you’re right, maybe Madi won’t forgive me. Maybe I don’t matter. I never mattered before I was John Silver, after all. Perhaps some people aren’t meant to matter for very long, or at all. And - even if Madi should leave me, I’ll find a way to live with it. Alone was all I ever was, before you found me, and I can learn to be alone again. You’ve seen for yourself how adaptable I am - ”

“John,” Flint says firmly, reaching up and cupping Silver’s face in his hands, forcing him to look up and into his sorrow-filled eyes. 

Silver laughs, slightly hysterical, through the tears streaming down his face. “That’s not even my real name.”

It’s almost not true, for he has never been more real than he has this past year, as John Silver. But John Silver is not the name his mother gave him, the name he can just barely remember hearing in her soft, lilting voice.

Flint sighs, hesitates for a moment, before speaking again. “Solomon.”

Silver goes rigid, even his ever-trembling hands freezing for a brief moment. He closes his eyes, presses his forehead against Flint’s, breathing slow and measured. If he doesn’t count his breaths, if he doesn’t keep them even, he might stop altogether. 

“What was it you once said, about being made transparent?”

Flint snorts at that. “You are anything but transparent. John Silver, Solomon Little, whoever else you might be - every piece of you is hidden from sight.”

Silver pulls back, until he can look Flint in the eye, tears be damned. The time for pride has long since passed. “Not every piece. Some things, Madi tells me, are all too clear.”

He kisses Flint, just the barest, chaste press of his lips. And then, for once in his godforsaken life, he is brave. 

“I love you. Let me save you.” His breath catches, hitching on what is dangerously close to a sob. “What is the point of falling in love, in loving anyone, if all it brings is agony? If all it does is force you watch the ones you love die? If that is love, I do not want it. Flint, that cannot be what love is, I  _cannot_   - ”

Flint kisses him again, pulls him close and holds him steady. It is not gentle, or sweet; it is a desperate, anguished thing, two men trying to make up for time long since lost. Flint’s kiss is searing, and Silver knows, even as he leans into it, even as he gasps against this onslaught, that it will ruin him. 

That it will haunt him.

He pulls back, breathless and dazed.

“Flint,  _James_ ,  _please_  - ”

“Alright,” Flint says, finally, wrapping his arms around Silver’s waist and resting his head on his shoulders. “Alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> catch that hobbit reference???? i'll never be over it
> 
> tumblr: slverjohn


End file.
